Since moving to London
four years ago it's been difficult to avoid your kind. Though you
mostly seem confined to Shoreditich you occasionally seep into
neighbouring parts of London as groups of skinny jeans clad, window
glass spectacle wearing, posh voiced young men and women head to,
say, Covent Garden, Westminster or even as far as Brixton to
experience (of course in an ironic way) how the normals live. There
are also times where I have had to travel through your domain on my
way between engagements and I am also a regular user of the 35 bus
(which starts/terminates in Shoreditch) and have at times had to sit
amongst you as you wax lyrical about how incredibly deep and
philosophical the first Matrix film is and how awesome your new yoga
teacher has been. But however much I find you and your ilk off
putting, in general we have agreed to keep ourselves as part of an
unspoken truce. As I roam London I often like to live in my own
little world, a world you have never intentionally invaded. The truce
remained unbroken... until yesterday.
The truce was broken on
my return commute as I entered a tube train at Angel station. It was
a Friday and the Standard does an extra large crossword which I enjoy
tackling on my journey home. As I moved to the one empty seat on the
carriage I needed to manoeuvre my less than nimble body around a
flannel shirt wearing, beard sporting and, most worryingly, guitar
wielding gentleman. And whilst my inner monologue mumbling “hipster
twat” I sat down and began to tackle the first word. What I did
not realise is that I seemed to have stumbled into to this
gentleman’s unilaterally defined performance area and not only had
he decided to force his talents on all the unwilling commuters with
whom I shared a carriage, he wanted to involve me. Apparently not
being able to read my body language, at this point screeching “fuck
off and leave me alone”, he pressed on and started playing his
guitar at me and demanded that I sing because I had sat in his
“singer's seat”. He announced the rule about the “singer's
seat” to other commuters as if it was some kind of already
established in joke (though everyone else seemed oblivious). In the
end it was these commuters who saved me The wonderful, miserable,
anti social commuter of London had unanimously decided to ignore this
arsehole. Despite his ridiculously peppy demeanour he was unable to
turn a head or even make eye contact with anyone. As we entered
another station the collective ennui of London's public transport
users had defeated this performer he left the carriage demanding we
like him on Facebook. A victory for miserable bastards everywhere.
A big thank you to my
fellow Londeners and a big fuck you to the hipster twat who thought
his performance art was important enough to forcibly shove in
people faces as they went about their business.
Regards,
Blakeley
